Touching the Moon Page 10
“Julie!” Dan shouted. He was shocked, relieved, overjoyed. “Oh, God!” He raced across the lot and wrapped her in a big bear hug.
She squeezed him back enthusiastically.
“We feared the worst.”
“No worries,” she blushed. “Gray pulled me through.”
He looked at her for just a second too long, then he glanced up at the Sioux and assessed him with a critical eye. “What happened?” he asked, his voice all cop.
Julie answered. “I had taken a new trail and gotten lost. Gray found me in the forest, in the snow.” Dan cocked his head to one side. Gray didn’t say a word. “I weathered out the storm in his cabin.”
Dan’s eyes lifted to Gray’s once again as he chewed on that bit of information, then dropped back to study Julie’s face.
“You doing okay?”
“Of course! But I’m positively dying for a real meal. We’ve been living off of canned soup.” She gently slammed her body into Gray’s. “Chicken and stars, chicken noodle, chicken and rice, tomato and rice, cream of mushroom, cream of broccoli—”
“All right,” he said, and looked at Gray again. The Sioux’s face was inscrutable. “I’ll take you home.” Dan reached for her hand, but she pulled away.
“No,” she said, uncomfortably. “I appreciate the offer, but I will drive my own self home. My car is here.” She turned to Gray. His face was stoic and closed, lips pressed together tightly. She frowned. He looked frightening in the thin blue light of morning. He was quite another person in the moonlight.
“Let’s make sure your car starts, Julie.” It was Gray who had spoken. At last. She nodded silently, and both men escorted her to her vehicle. The tension was as weighted as the muck beneath her feet. The Corolla fired to life and she beamed back at them, letting it idle.
“Did anyone else get caught on the mountain when the snow fell?” she asked.
Dan nodded slowly. “Another woman,” he said. Julie could tell from the way he spoke that it wasn’t good. “Looks like she was attacked by an animal.”
Gray stiffened.
“She’s…” Julie let the question hang.
“She’s dead,” said Dan.
“Is she local?” asked Julie.
“Yes,” said Dan. “But, I don’t think you know her. She was a nurse over in Rapid City.”
He turned to Gray. “Susan Featherweight.”
Julie watched Gray’s face go white.
“Does the family know?” Gray asked.
“Yes,” said Dan heavily.
“I will stop by their home,” Gray said quietly. He locked eyes with Julie. “I’ll swing by when I’m finished.”
Julie nodded and he turned to go. There was a moment of uneasy silence as she and Dan watched Gray slosh through the melting ice and snow, then Dan spoke in hushed tones.
“Julie?” She looked up at him expectantly. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She smiled at him reassuringly. “I am totally fine.”
Dan nodded slowly. “I’m uncomfortable with this.”
“It’s all good. I just need to go home.”
“Why are you so unsettled?”
“Because I’m ashamed of myself, Dan.” She stared hard at the dashboard, unwilling to meet his eyes, her voice tight with emotion. “Gray has rescued me three times now, and I have given him nothing less than fear and distrust each and every time. I’m disgusted that I could make such a tender, caring soul feel so low. It amazes me that he still seeks my company. I do not deserve his care or his kindness.”
Dan watched her carefully, weighing the situation. “All right,” he said slowly, squeezing her shoulder. “But don’t beat yourself up too much. Your fear is natural. He’s a very big man and you are just a little thing. I’ll swing by the veterinary office tomorrow.”
She nodded stiffly.
“Julie?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure you I can’t take you home? I’d like to do that.”
“No. I’m good.” She sighed. “Really.” She rubbed her cheek against the hand still resting on her shoulder. “I’ll bake you some cookies. You go do your cop thing.”
Trust. He asked for trust, and she was going to give it to him. Julie pulled into her driveway with a sigh of relief. She had picked up some kitchen essentials at the supermarket and purchased a bottle of wine. Tonight, she was going to fix a real meal. She entered and tossed her keys on the counter.
First things first. She picked up the phone and called Cole Peters, then she dialed Rose. With her professional life back in the saddle, she trotted upstairs and took a long hot shower then dressed and made dinner.
Sara McLaughlin was playing on the stereo when Gray tapped lightly at the door.
“You look lovely,” he said, his eyes sweeping the length of her in obvious approval.
“I’m making us a fabulous feast. Could you open the wine?”
She clinked her glass to his then took a sip. “Hard to believe we were stuck up in the mountains this very morning with just a fireplace and some tins of soup, huh?”
He nodded.
“It all seems so… other.”
Gray nodded slowly, his eyes watchful.
“You visited the woman’s family?”
“Yes. Not good. The community is distraught. Her parents are ghostlike in their grief.”
“Do they know how she died? Was it the storm or the animal attack?”
“It was not the weather.” Gray turned and looked out the window. “Something got to her first.”
“Where was she found?”
“Not far from where I found you,” he said flatly.
She just looked at him in shock. “Oh my God.”
“I don’t think you should venture onto the trails alone for a while.”
“Was it a bear?”
He looked at her sharply. He’d rather she hear it from him. “It was a wolf.”
“It wasn’t my wolf! Gray, I assure you with every fiber of my being, it wasn’t my wolf! My wolf is kind and tender and loving.”
“I thought he was fierce, ferocious and mean,” he said. The corner of his mouth quirked upward slightly.
“Not my wolf.”
“Well, don’t be surprised if Officer Keating comes calling,” he continued. There was an edge to his voice. “He knows your wolf travels with you in the woods. He knows your wolf visits you here in the house. He’s going to have a few questions, I’m sure.”
“And you know this… how?”
“Because you live in Smalltown, USA.”
She nodded, acknowledging both his words and the seriousness of the situation. “Please sit. I’m so sorry about Susan. Can you eat?”
He took a sip of wine. “Despite it all,” he said sadly, “I’m very, very hungry.”
“Stress,” she replied. “And a liquid diet. Please eat.”
He took a bite of beef and moaned in satisfaction. Deep. Long. Loud. She laughed, brightening the atmosphere, scattering their troubles like cold water droplets on a hot skillet.
“Gray Walker, you are an expressive man.”
He leaned back in his chair and patted his belly.
“I like your smiles,” she added. “You should smile more often.”
There were bowls of Bananas Foster for dessert, and when Gray was finished, he licked the spoon. He looked hopefully back towards the empty sauté pan and pursed his lips in disappointment.
“You’re great for my ego,” she murmured, clearing the table.
“Thank you for dinner,” he said, rising. “I will miss you tonight.”
He placed a hesitant hand on her waist, and when she didn’t step away from his touch, he tugged her to him gently. His eyes roved across her face, drinking in the sight of her. Then he bent down and kissed her lips. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of herself and her feelings. The snowstorm was over. Her life was back to normal. And yet, here was Gray, touching her in a way she would have never allowed under normal circumstances.
She wasn’t sure that she wanted her life to change this much. She wasn’t sure of anything.
He pulled back, his face clouded. “You are very far away,” he said quietly. He tugged on a curl. “Come back to me, Julie.”
Her eyes focused upon his. She regarded him silently for a moment, then she leaned forward, wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight.
15
There was a lot of explaining to do at the office the next day. Cole and Rose had been deeply worried. Then Dan stopped by carting a topographical map of the mountain. The hiking trails had been super-imposed and he asked her to track her route. She did so, getting just as confused as she had gotten on the mountain.
They went over the trek repeatedly. When he was sure that she had pinpointed her route with some accuracy, he laid a transparency overtop the topographical map showing the site where Susan had been attacked. It was, as Gray had mentioned, very close to her lost and random wanderings.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” she said. “The woods were so quiet. Spooky, actually. When Gray found me I was already rather frightened.”
“By what?”
“I was lost, cold.” She shivered inadvertently.
“Julie, Susan was raped before she was attacked by the wolf.”
She stiffened in surprise.
“How was Gray when he found you? Normal? Agitated? Disheveled?”
She frowned, uncomfortable with the insinuations. “He was calm and very concerned for my well-being.”
“Why was he there, Julie? Why was he there – where you were – in the forest?”
Well, now. That was the $64,000 question, wasn’t it?
She drew a breath. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. She remembered that moment. Then her thoughts flashed to the nights in the cabin, “But, I don’t care.”
“You should.”
“Why?” she asked heatedly. “Gray had plenty of opportunity to do me harm. He didn’t. He saved me, Dan. I would have died out there, too.”
“Don’t you find it odd that his path crossed yours on that mountain?”
She fell silent. Of course, she did, but Gray Walker was a good man and she said so.
“Okay, so, let me get this straight, Gray appears out of nowhere in the middle of a blizzard, and you just follow him to his cabin? No second thoughts?”
“Don’t be insulting.” She was getting irritated now. “I was frightened, and it took Gray a lot of verbal coercing to make me see that heading back to my car down-mountain in a blizzard was suicide. He was inordinately patient and waited for me to agree to a wiser rescue option. My hesitation almost cost us both our lives.”
“Anything happen in that cabin that I should know about?”
“He carved beads out of bone, fed the fire, fed me. I was with him in a one-room cabin for a week. I think I would have seen signs had he been the one to hurt Susan. When I wanted to wash, he left the cabin in its entirety for far longer than he needed to. He never got closer to me than I was comfortable with, and as you know, I have a very wide comfort bubble.”
“Julie,” he said somberly. “We’re going to get a DNA sample from Gray.”
She swallowed. “Do me a favor,” her voice came out as a husky rasp. “Do it quietly, please. He’s a youth counselor on the reservation. The inquiry could destroy him and his reputation. He loves his job.”
“I can do this quietly.”
“Dan, he’s not the one.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll know soon enough,” he paused. “You see that wolf of yours up there while you hiked?”
“No.” She went to say more, but he held up a hand.
“Don’t you dare tell me your wolf wouldn’t attack a hiker. Your wolf damn near tore a house down trying to get to me.”
She was quiet for a moment. She studied her hands. She could feel him watching her. It made her uncomfortable.
“Did Gray stop by your house last night?”
“He did. He had visited Susan’s family. He told me about it. He stayed for dinner.”
“I’d like you to avoid Gray until I get the test results back.”
She looked up at him, her eyes large and luminous.
“I don’t think you ought to go hiking on your own either.”
She nodded stiffly.
“And I want you to call me if you remember anything unusual about that day on the mountain. Anything unusual at all.”
Gray stopped by the veterinary office later that week with the spring baseball schedule and an invitation to the coaches’ meeting at the local high school. He dropped off a team roster, sample score sheet, a small booklet on baseball rules plus a local list of in-field protocols.
She hefted the manila envelope with grave seriousness. “I do believe that I’ve bit off more than I can chew,” she said cautiously.
“No welching,” he said, his face grave. He nodded at her to reaffirm his words then left.
He never mentioned the DNA testing. She didn’t mention it either. He was not a match and Dan told her so. Those were tense days, but they were behind her now.
Her thoughts wandered often to that day in the snow-covered woods and how he had found her. It was a thought that detonated softly within her consciousness when things got quiet and still. Surely, Dan would have asked Gray that question, but obviously, whatever explanation had been given was a satisfactory one. Nothing had come of it. Like the DNA. So, she silenced her mind.
Dan asked her to dinner twice after the snowstorm. Twice she declined. He wasn’t happy about the distance between them. His feelings manifested themselves in how often he questioned her “officially” about her hike on the mountain. She gave him the same answers to the same questions. Then he asked a new one.
“Why won’t you go out with me?”
She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him that she thought about Gray Walker every quiet moment, that somehow her world had shifted on its axis during that snowstorm. She was on edge. Dan put her on edge. Because something had indeed happened in that cabin, but for the life of her, she couldn’t say what.
In the band, she found release. Elliott monopolized her Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. She and the band practiced hard and played hard. They constructed strong sets and staged them well. A bad girl routine had her in a prison uniform that was cropped inordinately short singing Lee Ann Rimes’ Idle Hands, Jo Dee Messina’s My Givadamn’s Busted, Maroon Five’s Wake Up Call and Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats.
She adapted a few Johnny Cash songs into the bad girl repertoire and finished the set with the sad and lonely ballad from Pulp Fiction – If Love is a Red Dress. Elliott played the guitar solo and whistled the accompaniment. It brought down the house every time she sang it.
16
Julie glanced at her watch and walked across the parking lot quickly. Work had run late, so she was a tad tardy arriving to ball practice. Gray had the team sitting on the bleachers going over some formalities. She stood off to one side near the front of the tiny assembly.
“This is Miss Julie, your assistant coach,” he said, gesturing to her and acknowledging her arrival. She raised a hand in greeting. “She is late, but we’ll let it slide this once. From here on out, all offenders will drop a dollar into the pizza fund. Miss Julie will drop two.
What cheek, she thought, unbuttoning her lab coat.
Underneath, she sported a skin-tight pair of blue jeans and a scoop neck turquoise shirt that fit her snuggly. First one young man, then another turned her way. By the time she had reached the third button, the entire team was watching her with undivided attention. Gray glanced over, took in the curves and the cleavage and smiled.
He cleared his throat, corralling their focus. “We don’t have a long practice season, men,” he stated. “I’ll need you to work hard over the next two weeks. Where are my pitchers?” Four hands went into the air. “Throw to each other. The rest of you, run the bases until I say stop.”
“What am I going to do?” Julie asked when the boys were into their work detail.
“Your work really won’t start until the official games begin,” Gray explained. “During the season, you’ll be the first base coach.”
“What does first base coach do?”
“Stands there and cheers the boys on as they run to first.”
“That sounds easy enough.”
“That’s why you are also official scorekeeper. I know you can multi-task.” She narrowed her eyes at him and tried to look threatening. That was tough to do to someone three times her size, but she did her best.
On all counts.
When a boy got a hit, she screamed with excitement and jumped around ecstatically. The boys watched her and smiled, their eyes wide with delight. Gray Walker never saw so many line drives in his entire baseball career. Hoo-hah.
As practice ended, Gray sidled up close and made a polite inquiry. “I’ve burned at least three pounds off of you this evening. May I invite you to pizza and beer to replace a debt owed?”
She looked up at him and they locked eyes. “I tried to come up with a colorful pick-up line all practice,” he admitted. “How did I do?”
The honesty made her smile. “The colorful pickup line is pure Gray,” she admitted, tongue in cheek.
“I’m a pepperoni kind of guy, but completely flexible.”
“Well, it just so happens that I’m a pepperoni kind of girl.”
He placed a hand over his mouth and spoke into it as if talking to command central. “Houston! We have launch.”
Gray rang her up at the office two days later.
“Listen,” he said, “There’s a ballgame on television Friday night. All the coaches and scorekeepers are meeting over at Jake’s for some barbeque and a few beers. The scorekeepers have to track the game. I’ll pick you up at five, okay?”
She frowned into the receiver but said, “Sure.”
“Wear what you wore at practice.”
“What?” she asked, not quite sure that she’d heard correctly.